Van airport, pre-Shanghai

I have to say, I've flown many times through Vancouver YVR but have never been through international and it's beautiful! There's a massive fishtank, loads of duty free shops, and just yeah, had no idea all of this existed here!

Sitting online taking care of last minute business, which includes not getting all the pay I'm due from my last job so this will be difficult to take care of from overseas and an annoying headache, but also enjoying sitting at my computer here in the lounge looking out at the mountains. They're pretty clear too since it's not raining.

Just saw this video posted on fb by my friend Annie, haha, made me smile:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-oe2PvmFp8&featurea=youtu.be

(tried putting it as a direct link but for some reason it wasn't showing up once I publish the post -think I need to edit the colour of link text in my blog, I changed to this layout just this month, but will look into that later. You will have to tiresomely copy and paste the link into a new browser window :P )

Sad I can't hang around to watch the Canucks play tonight! Wonder if I'll be able to access online Canucks radio from China? I also missed Bones last night and hope I have a fast enough internet connection when I get there in order to stream on Megavideo -or if there's another site I'll have to go to? Or will all that kind of stuff be blocked?

Fly in the morn

Well, my flight leaves in the morning, transfer through Vancouver and then off to Shanghai. Will be a bit of shlepping because when I arrive I take a train to Hangzhou, stay there a couple of days for training, and then a train to Nanjing will I will spend the duration.

Prettyyyy much all packed now. Had a lot to take care of being leaving and now the sun is setting (or rather the light is fleeting since it's April 14 and it snowed ALL DAY here in Edmonton so just grey and I am NOT impressed!) on the last day in Canada for a while!

Might not get to travel at all once I get to Nanjing because teach right up until my flight, but the city is very historical (used to be the capital) so I'm sure there will be a lot to see! (Did I mention this in my last post? Can't remember, distracted watching the Office!)

China this week

Less than a week until I fly off to China to teach English at a college.

Volunteered at Rona Ambrose's election campaign headquarters today and am going to go back on Monday for a couple of hours to help out on the phones.

If it's any consolation to myself, I did get one response to my last blog post where I solicited for people to say hello, but the comment was on Gmail's "Buzz" so it didn't show up on here as well :P

Don't have too much to take care of before leaving. It's just a short term contract until first week of July, so if it goes incredibly wrong, it's not as though I have planned a year around it. Should be a pretty interesting experience though. I wonder if I'll be able to actually get to a functioning level in Mandarin.

Soccer

I played indoor soccer this past weekend for the first time in about 10 years after injuring my knees and having to retire from club soccer and enter into track & field (I did provincial level t&f for about three years after exiting soccer to strengthen my knees, work on technique, etc., and it was a lot of fun but I missed soccer for quite some time). I appeared to not have lost all of my touch, which was a nice feeling, and it made me want to enter into a women's league again this coming year. After not having played for that long, it was more fun for me than any of the rugby I've played since grade 11 when it had been offered to me as an alternative. It appears my knees are fine and it might have just been growing pains way back when. Who knows.

I'm home today from work though. I chested a ball booted by the opposing male goalie and I was right by the bench when I did it. I immediately grasped at my chest and ran off, wondering if I would need the defibrillator. I played the rest of the game, but once the adrenaline wore off, I've had chest pains and laboured breathing since, so here I am at home instead of at work.

I have a lot of paperwork to take care of though so at least I'll be more likely to get to it this evening than when I get home exhausted from work and don't want to do anything extra that resembles work.

Photos were taken from a phone in the stands so maybe I'll post one in the next day or so, so that there's at least some visual content and not just boring ramblings :P

I tried removing nail polish last night but I don't have gauze, just kleenexes, and I didn't have the patience to scrub for a long time at each nail, so I have weird looking remnants of light pink. Hmm, not even that I didn't have the patience. The kleenex rips up if you press to hard, and you have to keep pouring on more remover because it absorbs it fully after a few seconds, so it's pretty hard to do the job properly. At least it wasn't a dark colour!

I haven't had a comment on a blog post in over a year, but I know randomly people do read this sometimes because even during weeks at a time when I don't have a new update, when I check on my profile, it always says there are at least a few more views. If you've read this, give me a shout! Perhaps it will prompt me to become more interactive with it again and post exciting things like circa 2008! Maybe. No promises. But say hi anyway.

Looking forward/onward

It's like a constant punch to the stomach. A hollow feeling. I need to get out of here; I need to go to somewhere entirely different and at least feel like I'm living.

If I were motivated...

Actually, it's not really a matter of motivation, I just don't have the same desire to create blog posts like I did when I first started this. I still enjoy having this site exist, but for quite some time now I haven't been updating that often -which is obvious from the lack of posts. Perhaps now that I have a fulltime job and am not freelancing anymore, things like posting online for fun on here will pick back up again.

Watching HGTV and looking forward to a relaxing weekend -although also looking forward to getting back to the gym after being away on holiday and then starting a new job and not wanting to be tired!

Definitely not the greatest level of literary achievement in this post, but ah well!